party. In certain of the prisoners,
character, and sanity with it, held fast against every circumstance.
In others, some of whom had been well educated and came from gentle
homes, the brute instinct was as uppermost as in an East African
cannibal.

From such crucibles as these, even more than from the remittent
stresses of combat in war, comes the clearest light on the inner
nature of man, insofar as it needs to be understood by the officer who
may some day lead a force into battle.

Snap judgment on the data might lead to the conclusion that every
individual is exactly according to his own mould, that influence from
without can not catalyze character, and that hence training has little
to do with winning loyalty and instilling dutifulness. That would be
as radically false as to believe that training, when properly
conducted, can make all men alike and can infuse all ranks with the
desire for a high standard. The vanity of that hope can be read out of
what happened to the force at Cape Sabine. But the positive lesson
glows even more strongly. The good Sergeant, Brainard, wrote of his
Lieutenant, Lockwood, that he "loved him more than a brother." It was
the service which taught him the worth of that attachment; Brainard's
superb courage developed initially out of his unbounded admiration for
Lockwood's dauntlessness, and in time the copyist outdistanced the
model. Emotionally, Greeley and Brainard were quite unlike. One was a
New England Puritan, the other a hard-boiled sergeant. But they became
as one in the interests of the force; service training had made that
possible.

Psychologists tell us that every sense impression leaves a trace or
imprint of itself on the mind, or in other words, what we are, and
what we may become, is influenced in some measure by everything
touching the circumference of our daily lives. The imprints become
memories and ideas, and in their turn build up the consciousness, the
reason and finally the will, which translates into physical action
the psychological purpose. In the process, moral character may be
shaped and strengthened; but it will not be transformed if it is dross
in the first place. That is something which every combat leader has
learned in his tour under fire; the man of whom nobody speaks good,
who is regarded as a social misfit, unliked and unliking, of his
comrades, will usually desert them under pressure. There are others
who have the right look but will be just as quick